Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

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Monthly Archives: September 2008

That’s right. I said it. So shoot me. But I have my reasons. Android may let you change everything, but there is something more critical:

But the most important concern for users is consistency — of user interface, of operation – consistency in how the device works for them. Consistency is far more important than the ability to change everything.

It may already be happening. The four major agencies tracking Earth’s temperature, including NASA’s Goddard Institute, report that the Earth cooled 0.7 degree Celsius in 2007, the fastest decline in the age of instrumentation, putting us back to where the Earth was in 1930.

Mike Zafirovski, Nortel’s chief executive, said in the statement that the company is conducting an exhaustive review to further reduce costs, including the sale of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks business.

"It is clear that the business environment in which we operate requires additional immediate and decisive actions," he said. "We are determined to reshape the company to maximize its competitiveness, drive a significant increase in effectiveness and efficiency company-wide."

I seem to have heard this song before. A once proud company, decimated. Just put it out of its misery now.

In their latest Zune press release, Microsoft also seems to have dropped any pretense of social networking, and instead focused on the device as merely a channel for users to discover and purchase more music. But with more colors and designs. This seems to be a literal case of "putting lipstick on a pig".

A friend just sent me a letter that a friend had passed along to him, purportedly written by an Alaskan, attacking Sarah Palin. The letter starts like this:

As an Alaskan, I am writing to give all of you some information on Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I know more than most of you about her and, frankly, I am horrified that he picked her.

This seemed a bit too convenient to me so I did this quick Google search. Lo and behold, 259 different Alaskan voters seem to have penned the exact same negative thoughts using the exact same words, and that meme has propagated via blogs and email.

Maybe the comments are true and maybe they aren’t, but they’ve certainly lost most of their credibility, and seem like merely another attack. Are the Democrats really that worried?

If you are having problems installing iPhone applications that you’ve developed on to the actual device, especially this one:

"Your mobile device has encountered an unexpected error (0xE8000001) during the install phase"

and you’ve rigorously followed the instructions in the iPhone Developer Program Portalto the letter, ignore the suggestion of disconnecting and reconnecting your device.

What you most likely need to do is open the info.plist file for your project and manually enter your iPhone App ID into the Bundle Identifierfield. Apple claims that Xcode does this automatically; it doesn’t.

And if you need further assistance, by far the best step-by-step explanation is available at Ralf Rottman’s Internet Home.It’s unfortunate that Apple couldn’t provide that kind of guide.

Drug advertisements aimed at consumers may not be having the effect on sales that opponents and proponents of the practice assume they do, a new study suggests.

[...]

The researchers found no evidence of a spike in sales for two of the drugs after the TV ads started to run. There was a marked increase in sales for a third drug but the effect was short-lived.

"I think that we’ve shown that the effects are pretty unimpressive for the three drugs we’ve looked at," said Harvard professor Stephen Soumerai, the senior author.

"Two out of three there isn’t an ounce of effect."

In Canada, before you can get a prescription you will need to get an appointment with a doctor, which can often take six days or longer. Then you may actually get a prescription, if that particular drug is approved to be used by the government. However, this would likely not have happened within the window of the study, so I’m not sure how accurate it would be.

And let’s not even talk about whether or not the average American consumer even has access to a doctor, let alone a bad doctor.

I’ve actually lived in both countries.I had a family physician within five minutes of my home about 40 minutes outside of Boston. And in the state of Massachusetts, nobody can be turned away from a hospital, regardless of ability to pay.

In Ontario, Canada, where I was born and raised, I do not have a family doctor, nor do 4.1 million Canadians. And good luck getting into a hospital here without either an OHIP or a Visa card.

It sounds to me that the average Canadian is the one with the problem.